[5] _Journal of the Senate_, 1824, p. 409.
[6] _MS. Minutes of the Common Council_, Vol. 52, pp. 75-78.
[7] During this agitation Jacob Barker, Judge Van Ness and M. M. Noah repeatedly presented, in the public prints, arguments in favor of using Tammany Hall as a court-room. We shall have need to refer to Barker again on another page.
[8] For a part of this time, it should be stated, the Federalists were in power.
Factional strife had not entirely smothered the demand for improvement in the city government.[1] The arbitrary powers of the Common Council, composed, as it was, of one Board in which sat both Aldermen and Assistant Aldermen, excited general dissatisfaction. Having the power of making assessments, ordering public improvements, and disposing of the public property at will, the Aldermen made no detailed account of their expenditures. One writer advised the Aldermen to curtail some of their own extravagances: “Why not stop,” he wrote,
“in their career of eating the most unreasonable and costly suppers every time they meet on public business and drinking such wines as they never in the course of their lives tasted before; choice wines that cost $40 a dozen? O! but I will soon tell a tale that will make our citizens stare. I understand that our city expenses are now nearly _$2,000 a day_.”
The State constitution of 1821-22 had granted the Common Council greater powers than before in vacating and filling important offices in the city. In 1823 the city debt was rising, and though the Common Council professed to attempt retrenchment, no real effort was made, the fathers being loth to give over the voting of pretended improvements out of which they benefited as individual contractors. The agitation continuing, the Legislature, in April, 1824, had passed a law to “erect” two separate chambers--a Board of Aldermen to be elected from among the freeholders for two years, and a Board of Assistants for one year, with concurrent powers. The opponents of the new branch termed it derisively the “House of Lords” and denounced its aristocratic nature. The amendment was defeated by the radicals in June, though the interest in it was slight. Over 8,000 electors failed to vote.
Other schemes for municipal reform dissolved in talk, and by the Spring of 1825 public attention became concentrated again on the matter of Jackson’s candidacy for the office of President. Barely had John Quincy Adams been inaugurated when Tammany set about to make Jackson his successor. On May 12 Sachem Nicholas Schureman, at the anniversary celebration of the society, gave this toast: “Jackson, the Hero of New Orleans, our next President.” Again, on July 4, the principal toast was to Jackson.[2]